


The Past Never Dies

by ApathyandCookies



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7854784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApathyandCookies/pseuds/ApathyandCookies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes redemption comes when you aren't even looking for it. When world-weary medical doctor Nichola Toora from the planet Tatooine helps an escaped slave to flee her captors, She finds that a past that was long dead and buried has suddenly returned to haunt her. Fleeing the clutches of both the Galactic Empire and an Outer Rim crime syndicate, she will come to find that the escaped slave is not quite what she appears, and there are far darker powers than the Empire and a handful of criminals that are intent on seeing her capture. </p><p>This is a novel-length story that I actually wrote some years ago and have since decided to do a complete rewrite, as I was unhappy with the direction I went with it last time. Though there are cannon characters that make an appearance, this story is entirely composed of new characters set in the GCW time period between episodes IV and V.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mos Eisley at Night

Sometimes it is truly a bad thing to be too clever for one's own good. Sometimes it can be a deadly thing.

Hasp Christo may have been aware of this and he might not have been, but either way he would have found very little appreciation for that irony as he ran through the dark streets of Mos Eisley on Tatooine. The twin suns had only recently descended below the horizon as he ran through the maze of narrow and haphazard throughways. The few street lights that lit his way also illuminated the meager handful of others out walking the streets, none of them so much as looking up at the panic-stricken human running through the city - such was a scene not at all uncommon to the dangerous city.

He was a man who made his living out of poking his nose into places that it didn't belong and profiting off of the things that it sniffed out for him. He never particularly cared about what carnage and destruction fell in his wake after he sold his information to the highest bidder. All he cared about was the feel of good hard money in his pockets at the end of the day. He was a simple man with simple desires and goals, not a man who ever really set out to hurt others but just a man who was primarily looking out for his own best interests. And on this particular occasion, the realization was beginning to dawn in his mind that on top of the other things, he was also about to become a very dead man.

The beat up and dirty cloak that he wore had obviously seen far more use than it had ever really been designed for. It looked little different than the boots he wore, or the trousers and shirt he wore. They all had faded and weathered until whatever original color they possessed had long since been left behind. Now they were the no-color of the Tatooine landscape itself, they were the color of the desolation and the dust that was the planet. For that matter, with his mangy beard and unkempt hair and his craggy and sun-tortured face that looked a score of years older than it really was, Hasp himself did not look all that much better for wear than his clothing did.

And so in the end that was all that he appeared to be; a shambling mass of nothing and dust that was making one last and desperate attempt to cling to life before succumbing to the inevitable. It was a sight that was far from uncommon in a world that itself seemed to be doing the same.

Street upon street he rushed down, occasionally tripping and stumbling in the collection of stones and sand that littered the roadway. At one point he ran directly in front of a lumbering dewback being ridden by a large and menacing-looking Trandoshan. The beast reared back at the suddenness of Hasp's appearance and almost tossed it's rider out of the saddle. Hasp could hear the angry Trandoshan shouting curses at him as he ran on into the more aged sections of the city. He had hoped that maybe here in the darkest and deepest pits of the largest city on Tatooine, maybe he could find someone who would help him out of the dangerous predicament he had made for himself. At the very least, maybe he could find some place that he could hide.

Eyes wide and breathing heavy, he suddenly stopped on a dark street in the older part of the city. He neither saw nor heard anything aside from the hushed guttural whispers coming from the direction of a couple pairs of glowing Jawa eyes that watched him inquisitively for a moment before they too quickly departed. After that, the only sound was the sounds of urban nighttime - the gentle rush of the desert wind compared to the more technological and urbane sounds of laughter close by and the sound of a starship's thrusters roaring to life at the nearby spaceport.

The thought of starships suddenly gave him a degree of hope. Maybe he could find someone who would quickly take him offworld. Where didn't matter, anywhere just as long as it wasn't a planet that had someone trying to kill him. The thought did not last, however. His pursuer was not alone and no-doubt had friends who would be waiting enthusiastically at the spaceport in the hopes that he would be unwise enough to attempt an escape.

Seeing nothing else to do, he ducked into the alleyway and slumped down behind a crate which smelled of vegetables which had been rotting for some time. He exhaled tiredly and looked up into the sky. Easily visible to the naked eye were a pair of Imperial Star Destroyers which were in low-orbit around the planet, they were part of some task force that had been assigned to this system ever since a dust-up the Empire had with some rebels a few months earlier. That wasn't what he was primarily focused on though; he was far more interested in the sky in general.

Hasp Christo stared at the stars, the unending and infinite expanse of starts that spread out over him. He was a thoughtful man in his own way at times, still a coward and a thief to be sure, but a thoughtful man. He looked up into the heavens and wondered what his life might have been like if his lot had been better, if he hadn't been forced to grow up and scratch out a living on this godforsaken ball of sand. He wondered what it was like to live on Coruscant, the imperial seat of the Empire; or maybe to live on Vortex, he once heard a traveler say that it was the most beautiful planet in all of the universe. Hasp didn't know about that, but he very much liked the idea of a place where he might have had an honest trade and something to take pride in, a family maybe.  
Kids, Hasp thought. Hasp would have very much liked to have had kids.

He wished he could go back and rearrange the day that he had set in motion the actions that would end his life. He was too clever for his own good; there was no doubt about that. It was only a single gesture, an unguarded gesture that set the wheels of his mind in motion. The culmination of which was the discovery of a secret which he wished he could unlearn, regardless of how much he was sure the Empire would pay him for. But unfortunately, what is learned is not easily forgotten and the knowledge that one person will pay for, another will kill for.

The starship which had recently ignited its thrusters now cycled them up as it prepared to take off. For a moment all sound around him was blotted out from the high pitched whine and then booming of the ship lifting off of the ground and taking to the stars. Hasp watched as the craft thundered over him, a large freighter bound for better places than here. He envied those aboard the ship and in a voice too quiet to even perceive amidst the noise.

“Clear skies.” he intoned, giving them a blessing for a safe and eventless voyage.

He watched the freighter as it sped away from Mos Eisley, taking the loud roar of its departure with it. It was only then that he could hear the crunching of boots against coarse gravel walking toward him. Hasp stood up quickly and pulled a blaster out of cloak as he backed up against the wall. A single red blaster bolt shot out from the shadowy figure approaching and struck him in the wrist, causing him to drop his weapon with a shout of pain. Almost quaking with fear, Hasp didn't even look to the charred flesh below his hand that would almost certainly require medical attention. He was far more concerned with living long enough to care whether or not it would require medical attention.

From the shadows stepped a woman and at last Hasp's fears were confirmed. There was going to be no escape from this, Hasp was going to die tonight. The look on her face was not what he had been expecting though; there was no hatred or malice in her eyes. He saw no blood thirst, no explicit wish for his death. All he saw in her eyes was a tiredness and perhaps sadness. None of this changed the fact that she had her blaster leveled at his forehead.  
"You aren't even going to try to run?" The woman asked him, it really was not a question.

"You're Ebra Burden." Was all Hasp said back.

He stared at her in what was either terror or horror. She could not tell which it was, but they both really amounted to the same when it was all over and done with. She had seen the same look on the faces of untold numbers of people about to meet their deaths. She made no reply to him but simply stepped forward and aimed her shot to make his death as quick and painless as she possibly could.

Sensing the end coming, Hasp shook his head back and forth quickly; he was weeping. "Please don't. I'm sorry I was so nosy. If you let me go, I promise that I will never tell anyone that you are alive."

The broken man collapsed to his knees, sobbing into the dry and uncaring dust. The woman that he called Ebra Burden slowly walked to stand over him, her blaster pointing down into the back of his head. She was an assassin, a damn good one, and one more death amounted to nothing; especially not in this place, especially not when it came to a man that would die as forgotten and unnoticed as he had been for his entire life. Nevertheless, a pair of tears rolled down her face knowing that she didn't have a choice in the matter.

"If it were just my life, I would let you go." She told him, sadly. "But there are other people that I'm protecting. If the Empire knows that I'm still alive, it will put them in danger too." And then she added, a little coldly. "You should have just minded your own business."

"I'm so sorry." Hasp coughed out in a strangled sob. "I've made such a mess of my life, I don't want to die. I want another chance."

The woman looked up into the sky for a moment, the endless and omnipresent sky, before looking back down at the man huddled on the ground.

"Please." He wept, his tears wetting the ground beneath him.

Ebra Burden pulled the trigger. The sound of the blaster went unnoticed in the din of the Mos Eisley night.


	2. A Late Night Encounter

The late night comings and goings of Mos Eisley happened almost unnoticed while the majority of the city slept through the night – especially here in the old quarter of the city. The Mos Eisley police mostly reserve their skills for the new quarter where they protected the merchants and the politicians; all of the people with a trade that was considered worth protecting. But it was here in the old quarter that the lower echelons of society were allowed to conduct their affairs without question from the powers that be. Here were the gamblers and the thieves, the smugglers and the vagabonds; the scum.

Mos Eisley's citizens might sleep through the night, but Mos Eisley herself never really slept. Some of its most important business took place in the very final hours of darkness before the binary suns rose to the sky to bring with them their torturous and scorching heat. Many people actually cherished these hours as that they were the few that provided any real relief from the planet's oven-like conditions. And some few where awake just because that's the state they happened to be in at that moment. In these couple hours before dawn, the majority of the inhabitants of the Mos Eisley Cantina fell into this last category.

In fact, this was the one time of day that the place seemed to take on a quiet stillness. The building was old and was constructed of the same sand-doped duracrete that made up basically the entirety of the old quarter. The building had no windows whatsoever – this was of practical value, of course – no windows meant that the establishment would stay cooler during the heat of midday with much less work. The interior of the building was mostly unadorned. It was what it was, ugly and brown with very little effort taken to make it look anything but. It was the look of most all of the business establishments in the area – a kind of earthy rusticness.

At times, the cantina could be almost deafeningly loud. And most of the time, it could be trusted to be dangerous to all but the most well prepared. But during this short amount of time in the early morning it was sleepy and laid back. A dark-skinned, and colossal beast of a woman who called herself "Mama Troga" played the nalargon on the stage, but her often boisterous and feisty music had deteriorated to fit the moods of the bar's last few patrons. So enormous that she made the expansive instrument that was arrayed around her look almost tiny as she plinked away at the keys, her mammoth form swaying back and forth to the music.

Few people really seemed to notice the music, least of all the woman who sat at a table in the middle of the room. Her long, desert camouflage duster hung down over her shoulders almost like a protective cloak. The matching shirt and pants underneath were obviously not a fashion statement, they had seen use. A lot of it, by the look of them. The only thing that seemed out of place was her hair; a long and simple blond braid worked its way down her back, a sharp and jarringly noticeable contrast from the tan and brown cloth.

Her chin rested on the table and she stared at the glass in her hand thoughtfully, only a trickle of amber fluid rested in the bottom of the vessel. She blinked drowsily as she watched the dim and dirty light of the cantina, diffused and muted by the sturdy walls of the glass. Through it, she could see the only lively patron in the entire establishment.

Slightly interested, even through the thick fog of her own drunkenness, the woman sat up and squinted her eyes. A Twi'lek woman danced across the floor in front of her. Definitely not one of the regular dancers, this was someone that she had never seen before. She was little more than a girl and the clothing that she was wearing weren't those of a dancer's. It was a curious sight to be sure, most of the dancers that entered this place were on the payroll of the cantina itself. All of them were hand-picked by the daytime bartender, Wuher, who seemed to have an eye for such things.

"Nichola, do you want a refill?" A voice above her said, startling her.

The woman in camouflage looked up to see a matronly old woman standing above her with a decanter of dark amber liquor. She looked at her own glass for a moment and then nodded.

"Sure, why not?" Nichola said, trying not to slur her words as she pointed nodded toward the twi'lek girl. "Who's the new dancer, Ackmena?"

The grey-haired human woman looked over at the Twi'lek for a moment before pouring the drink. "I don't know. She came in here a few hours ago and offered to entertain for tips. She's not much of a dancer, but I didn't have the heart to tell her no. I'm hoping she leaves before the daytime crowd starts pouring in here, she will find herself walking out of here as someone's slave…or worse."

"If she isn't someone's slave already." Nichola noted, taking a gulp out of the glass almost as soon as the liquid stopped flowing into it.

Ackmena looked over to the near-vacant bar for a moment before sitting down next to the woman with the blond ponytail.

"Yeah, I noticed that, too." She said. "Not dressed like much of a cantina dancer. Do you think she is an escaped slave?"

Nichola shrugged. "Probably, but I'm not going to be the one to turn her in. If she managed to get free and wants to make a better life for herself, then more power to her. It's probably not going to happen, but I've seen enough suffering to be party to any more. At least right now. I bet that by the time the sun sets tonight she's going to be in the hands of some slaver, though."

"If you don't think she has a chance" Ackmena said, an eyebrow raised, "Then why not turn her in and collect the money for her return?"

Nikki shrugged almost imperceptibly, she thought that the question was Ackmena's coy way of making fun of her, but she wasn't completely sure. "I didn't say she doesn't have a chance. Just that she doesn't have a chance on her own. And I don't turn her in because I don't need the money. But there are other people in here that do, and it's only a matter of time before one of them puts two and two together."

The old woman said nothing for a long moment, casting a critical eye on Nichola. "Its been five years, wouldn't you say, NIkki?"

Nichola cocked her head, not understanding. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"That you have been coming in here." Ackmena elaborated. "Five years wouldn't you say?"

Nikki went back to her drink, not wanting to meet the unerringly perceptive bartender's gaze.

The two of them sat in silence for a while listening to the sound of Mama Troga's nalargon, the bartender patiently waiting for the woman in front of her to answer the question.

"Yeah, it's been about that long." Nikki said after it was obvious the question wasn't going to be dropped.

"I know the people you work for." Ackmena said and then raised her hand up as Nichola opened her mouth to object. "I know the people you work for and I'm not going to pry – for my sake and yours both. But I just notice that you have been down lately. Not to mention you have been drinking a helluva lot more than usual. I just want you to know that if you ever need to talk about something, I'm here to listen."

Nichola couldn't find any words to say so she simply nodded at the bartender and watched as the woman stood up and walked back to do her business. She thought that Ackmena was a nice enough woman, but she didn't need to be burdened with any of her problems. And what problems did she really have anyway? Nothing that was important enough to complain about. She had a full stomach, a roof over her head and her freedom – which was a lot more than could be said for a fair portion of Tatooine's inhabitants.

The thought made her look once more to the dancing Twi'lek girl. She was quite attractive even in the dirty rags she was wearing, and her skin was a type of golden-peach color that was really quite rare on her species. If she was looking for tips, she truly chose the wrong part of the night to do it. Nikki had no doubt that she had probably been dancing the whole time without a single other person even noticing her.

Nichola reached down into her pocket and pulled out the money she had there. There were two paper notes there, a thousand credits, all of the hard currency she had on her at the moment. It was a healthy tip to be sure, an enormous one really – more than a lot of dancers see in a week of dancing during the profitable parts of the evening.

She stood up and upended her glass, emptying the last of the thick and caustic liquid into her mouth. She set the glass back down on the table and with the back of her hand, she wiped away the tiny trickle of alcohol from her chin that had somehow missed her mouth altogether. Her legs were leaden and wobbly, but with some complaint they did support her weight as she slowly dragged herself across the room.

The dancing girl did not notice Nichola until she was almost standing right next to her. She suddenly stopped dancing and looked at her with a mixture of alarm and, Nikki was sure that she could see it there, a barely existent glimmer of hope. She had the look about her that said it all; she was a recently escaped (or freed) slave that did not have the slightest idea what to do now that she didn't have anyone telling her what to do.

Nichola took the girls hand and pressed the two pieces of paper scrip into it, closing her fist around it.

"Take this and get yourself some food and some new clothes." Nikki whispered to the girl. "And then if you want to remain free, please get yourself out of this bar and out of this city."

"Thank you" The girl said, meekly. But Nichola either did not hear her or did not care to acknowledge it as she walked to the door and out into the early morning air.

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

The pre-dawn gloom had descended on Mos Eisley outside the Cantina. It was a curious weather phenomenon, a misty fog that descended on the desert just before the sun rose to burn it away. It gave the sand-colored buildings around her an older and more futile appearance. She bundled her duster around her and walked in the direction of the one which her speeder was parked in front of.

She thumbed the key on the remote unit as she got close to it. She could hear a servomotor come to life and the speeder's canopy quickly retracted back from the cockpit so she could climb inside, which she did with a difficulty and slowness that can only come from age or extreme drunkenness... possibly a little bit of both. Sitting down in the pilot's seat, she inhaled and exhaled several times, taking in a little bit more of the head-clearing cool air of the early morning before she sealed the canopy again and ignited the speeder's engines.

The SoroSuub XP-38's three engines roared to life and Nikki opened up the throttle a few times quickly, feeding extra fuel into the turbines, heating them up. There was no way that she was going to head home, the journey between here and there was not a particularly dangerous one, but it wasn't one you wanted to make in the dark when you had less than your full wits about you either. She decided it would be a better idea to go by her office here in town and just sleep there for the night.

The office of Doctor Nichola Toora had been a welcome sight to the old quarter ever since she set up shop five years ago. Very few doctors of repute or sanity were willing to work in such a backwater part of a backwater city on a backwater planet. The fact that Nikki's medical offices were most likely a front for another organization, probably a criminal organization, was both expected and unquestioned by the unseemly citizens of the old quarter who were just happy to have someone to tend to their various ills and injuries, many of them received in the commission of acts that they wanted as few questions asked about as possible.

That she was an enigma herself, a doctor trained at the Imperial College of Medicine on Corsucant who had decided to set up shop on the outer rim, was also ignored. Questions around here could be deadly. Again, the residents of this area were happy enough to have a legitimate doctor around at all. The conditions by which she had come to serve the community were irrelevant. 

Nikki was ready to leave, but her head simply did not wish to stop spinning. She elected to wait a few minutes and hopefully let her head clear before she took the short drive to her place of business. She killed the ignition on the speeder and reclined the seat, closing her eyes and groaning. She would start on her way soon, but for now she felt that she could use a little rest.


	3. Chapter 3

Nichola awoke with a start, nearly banging her head on the canopy of her landspeeder. A flood of sensations filled her head, the most insistent being the feeling as if a great durasteel spike had been driven through her forehead. The pain of her hangover was almost blinding. Her first reaction to waking up was to cover her eyes from the agony of the glare of the early morning suns pouring in through the cockpit of the speeder.

Surreally, someone was banging on the canopy of her speeder incessantly, she could see an open palm slapping against the glass and the glass itself seeming to bubble and bow inward under the impacts. The echo of the thumping inside the confined space from each hit made her head feel as though it were inside a drum. She tried to protest, but only a strangled croak came out of her dry and tortured throat. Instead, she fumbled around for the canopy release lever – anything to make the pain of the thumping stop.

Finally she found the lever and pulled, the servomotors whirred as the canopy retracted backwards. The flood of air entering the cockpit made her suddenly realize how hot it had gotten so early in the morning. She felt as though she was literally swimming in her own sweat that had gathered inside of her duster and heavy, military-spec camos. They felt suffocating, and the fresh air made her exhale in relief. She held her hand out to shield her eyes from the brilliant glare of the suns before she cautiously, experimentally opened one up to see who was so persistent about getting her attention.

The light of a thousand suns seemed to stream in through her narrowly cracked eyelid, it made her slam it shut again with another groan of agony. Slivers and shards of the night before slowly started to come back to her. She remembered talking to Ackmena and then something about a Twi'lek slave girl. She remembered her plan to go back to her office to sleep off the effects of the alcohol, but it seemed that her plan never worked itself out.

"Miss Nikki?" a girl's voice asked, unsure.

Nichola groaned again, inhaling and exhaling a few times. She steeled herself against the pain, and very cautiously opened her eyes against the sun. Standing over her, blessedly shadowing her face from the light of the rising suns, was a young girl of maybe fifteen or sixteen. She had a very tomboyish appearance that was not helped by how her hair was hewn short right below her ears, or by the signs of chronic malnourishment. She was one of the local urchins that did work for an "organization" that Nikki happened to be associated with.

"Mica…" Nikki croaked. "What do you want?"

Nikki didn't dislike Mica Wavingstrider, exactly. The girl was simply a fool who would very shortly wind up dead. Nichola didn't feel this with any malice toward the kid, nor did she wish her to be dead, it was just something that she was sure was going to happen. The girl had very little sense of danger or her own mortality and tended to get herself into hazardous situations for which she had planned no way to escape.

"Why didn't you go home last night? Didn't you realize that it was going to be hot when you woke up in here?" The girl started prattling, before leaning in and smelling the interior of the speeder. "Oh wow, are you drunk?"

"Mica…" Nikki repeated, sounding a little more irritated than she intended. "What do you want?"

"Oh, I have a message from Master Starstealer for you." The girl told her. "He needs you to come see him right away."

Nikki thought about it for a moment. Morden Starstealer was a boss of the organization Nichola worked for. The Setting Suns they were called, at least in the shadowy corners of Tatooine. To everyone else, the organization was a loose collection of legitimate business ventures, the largest of them being Starstealer Enterprises. The Shade had no formal member list, no formal headquarters and ultimately no real proof that they existed at all – such was the precautions necessary to operate a crime syndicate on a world that is already so well dominated by the Hutts.

"Well then what are you waiting for Mica, get your ass in here." Nichola said.

The girl seemed to be taken aback for a moment and then quickly nodded and ran around to the other side of the speeder while Nichola ignited the engines. The turbines came to life with a howl as the girl leapt into the passenger seat beside Nikki. She had no sooner gotten herself strapped in when the XP-38 lurched forward, speeding off down one of the main throughways of the old quarter, heading to the outskirts of Mos Eisley.

She had just happened to pass by the front of the cantina and saw something that made her sigh with disappointment. She saw that the dancing girl from last night was out in front of the cantina and talking to a pair of Twi'lek males. Nichola knew them, although not by name, they were slavers working for a competing crime syndicate. It seemed that her prediction was going to be true after all. The girl would be a slave again before the twin suns set.

She pushed the depressing though out of her head, and looked over at Mica in her passenger seat.

"You walked all the way here, kid?" Nikki asked as she slowed down for a moment to allow a trio of Jawas to escort their bantha across the road.

"No, I caught a ride into town with Morvii and Ardann" Mica said.

Nikki nodded as they had gotten underway again. She knew the pair, a Zabrak woman and her human husband. They were both excellent pilots and smugglers. It struck her for not the first time that some of the nicest people she knew were criminals. She supposed it meant that you can't judge someone by what they do for a living.

The speeder maneuvered its way through the outskirts of town and out through the city gates, beyond were the houses of the wealthy and affluent. In the hillsides over Mos Eisley were the grand homes, or as grand as truly could be made on this planet; their residents included the planet's great merchants and politicians, and also many of the more successful crime bosses. It was hard to tell exactly which of the three Morden Starstealer was, in a way he was actually all three of them at once. Despite his more nefarious pursuits, he was also a very prominent businessman and community leader.

Starstealer mansion was not far into the hills and it had a magnificent view of all of the comings and goings into and out of the city, Nikki suspected that Azwaros liked it that way. He was not the leader of the Setting Suns, but he was probably the unofficial second in command. It was his job to manage all of the legitimate front companies, the businesses that launder the ill-gotten money that flooded into the organization and made everything come through the other side clean again. He oversaw the operations that made them appear on the up and up, the businesses that allowed them to function with a minimum of hassle from the planetary and imperial officials.

As the speeder pulled up to the front of the mansion, one of the servants stepped up to the side. Nikki released the hatch and got out of the vehicle, leaving it running. Without a word to the servant, she handed over control of the speeder to him. Morden was big on decorum and luxury. He enjoyed the ability to pamper his guests with his servants and his valets. Nichola never felt truly comfortable with it, but eventually relented to the treatment. She did not care for the idea of someone doing something for her that she could just as easily do herself.

She walked to the front doors of the mansion, leaving Mica running to catch up with her. Predictably, there was someone there to open the quaint manual doors for them as they walked inside to the large entryway. The house itself was brightly lit, the foyer dominated by a large fountain – a luxury that only the wealthiest could afford on a planet as dry as Tatooine. The Starstealer family was rich to the point of vulgarity. Nikki had always suspected that it was the romantic side of Morden that kept him in the business – he liked the power it gave him to break the law, especially imperial law.

"Doctor Toora!" came a voice from a corridor to her left.

Nichola smiled as she turned to greet the imposing Zabrak that walked into the foyer. She only gave a slight wince of pain at the effect the man's booming voice had on her throbbing head.

"Good morning, Morden." Nikki said, nodding to him. "How are you today?"

The man crossed his clasped his hands in front of himself and gave a very good imitation of looking stern. "I would be doing much better if I had been able to find you when I first started trying yesterday afternoon, rather than this morning."  
Nikki shrugged. "Sorry about that. I had business to attend to yesterday and I turned my communicator off. I suppose I forgot to turn it back on afterwards."

"Nikki!" a shrill voice screamed, anchoring another spike of pain into Nikki's temple which caused her to visibly wince.

A preteen Twi'lek girl came running into the room and practically leapt into Nichola's arms. Nikki laughed despite herself, twirling the girl around once before setting her back on the marble floor.

"Good morning, Talanna." Nikki said. She enjoyed being here in the house of two of the very few people in the galaxy who she actually liked and enjoyed the company of.

"Talanna, dear." Morden said. "Go and play for a little while. Doctor Toora and I have business that we need to discuss."

"Yes father." The girl sulked and then spun in a circle, her lekku spinning about her head. She scampered off into the next room where, if Nikki's intuition was correct, she would be eavesdropping on the entire conversation.  
Obviously, the girl was not the blood child of Morden Starstealer. Nichola didn't know all of the details exactly, but the rumor was that he had found the young girl orphaned when she was a toddler and adopted her as his own. The girl had an unnatural penchant for getting herself into trouble, and more than once did a member of the Setting Sun find themselves assigned to the somewhat ignoble assignment of getting to baby-sit for young Talanna Starstealer. Nikki had been there before, but unlike many of the others, she didn't find it to be an onerous task at all. She rather liked spending time with the young girl. The fact that she found the same trait about Talanna endearing which she found irritating in Mica she did not pay much mind to at all.

"Nichola, do you know of a Rodian named Heeooto Sewo?" Morden asked.

"I think so." She said. "He's a spice smuggler, really small time. He's been operating in this area lately, but he hasn't been enough of a threat that putting him out of the way is worth the trouble. Has that changed?"

"Yes and no." Morden said, directing Nikki and Mica to a couch by the fountain. "He's not a threat to our interests, but at the same time he has been muscling into our territory in a way that the boss finds…troubling."

The boss… Nichola thought. Searyn Wolfglaive was a man that she had only seen a handful of times; it was generally a good thing too, seeing that he had a reputation for being not entirely stable at times, and was about as ruthless a man as they came. She much preferred doing all of her business through Morden.

"We want him to be dealt with in a way that discourages others. Specifically, we want Sewo to have "imperial difficulties" if you take my meaning."

Nikki smiled and nodded. "That's where I come in, I take it."

Morden nodded, to which Nikki simply leaned back in the soft couch and crossed her hands behind her head. She appeared to be deep in thought for several long minutes, pausing once to take a look at the timepiece attached to her wrist. Morden in no way showed any sign of impatience, simply waiting as Nikki worked out what would be (as it usually did) a fitting method of dealing with this relatively minor distraction.

Finally, she leaned forward again and looked at Morden.

"Okay, I'm going to take Mica with me today, she's going to be helping me out with this one." Nikki said, ignoring the look of alarm she got from the girl sitting next to her. "I'm going to need all of the intelligence we already have on this Heeooto Sewo, and then I'm going to need spice… a lot of spice."

A small smile played across Nichola's face as she winked.


	4. Natural Subterfuge

Lieutenant Marr Herrick stepped out of the Imperial Security offices in the new quarter of Mos Eisley, barely even hearing the sound of the door hissing shut behind him. It had been a long day and he was glad that it was over. He hated Tatooine. He hated absolutely everything about it. He had a hard time imagining anything more menial and soul-killing than working on this meaningless and insignificant ball of dirt off in the middle of nowhere.

He was beginning to adopt a defeatist mentality about being stationed here. It wasn't any surprise to anyone that an assignment to Tatooine definitely was a sign of a career that was going nowhere. He had such plans when he joined the Imperial Security Bureau. He was going to make a real name for himself. Instead he somehow found his way off of his pleasant home planet of Naboo and onto this bleak and decidedly unpleasant planet on the outer rim.

He stepped into the street and started walking in the direction of the little hovel that he had been sent to as part of his housing assignment when he was sent here three months earlier. He was assured that he would be given better accommodations after he had a chance to settle in. The rest of the officers assigned here thought of this promise as an amusing joke, all of them had been told the same thing and they had yet to see the administration follow through on that promise – and some of them had been assigned to Mos Eisley for years.

His soul wailed at that thought…"for years." It was depressing to think that he had been on this planet for as long as he already had been. It was a worse thing to think that he could be here for a much, much longer time.

These frustrating thoughts had caused him to momentarily lose track of where he was going and he nearly walked headlong into an old woman and the girl walking along with her. The woman looked taken aback, almost panic stricken. Worse, she had the look of neediness in her eyes that Marr had come to associate with people who were just about to waste large amounts of his time. With an inward sigh of frustration, he waited for her to tell him whatever it was that (she thought) was so damned important.

"Oh sir!" She said, her accent was thick. "I'm so glad that we ran into you. My granddaughter here just came across something that is simply terrible. Terrible!"

He looked from the old woman to the teenaged blond girl and wondered if anything in the galaxy could truly be that terrible.

"Okay, what exactly are you talking about?" Marr asked the woman, trying mostly unsuccessfully to keep the tone of derision out of his voice.

"Everyone in our neighborhood knows of this place and I have told my daughter and her friends so many times not to go around there or play near there, but they never listen to me." The woman crooned, her accent so thick that it was nearly indecipherable. “This place has always been bad. It was bad when I was a girl. It was bad when her mother was growing up. But the last few cycles have been so terrible!”

Marr held both of his hands up, trying to keep his temper from flaring. "Hold on a second. I don't know what you are talking about, what place does everyone know about and why?"

"The Rodian bastards in the house, they are always selling horrible stuff to the people that come by there, they are always trashing up my city. And nobody ever does anything about it." The woman's rant continued.

Marr had a difficult time suppressing a smile. The woman's blind rage reminded him of his mother in a not entirely endearing way. He listened to her go on for almost five full minutes, not paying attention to most of it but knowing that if he let her rave for a bit then she would be satisfied enough to answer the few simple questions he would need to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. He suspected that it was the woman's granddaughter who was standing off to the side and absent-mindedly pulling at her long blond hair who would be a much better source of information.

Finally when the ranting died down, Lieutenant Herrick took matters into his own hands and circumvented the old woman altogether, focusing his attention on the girl.

"Okay my dear." He said kindly. "You saw something in this place that your grandmother has been talking about; could you tell me what it was?"

"Well, umm…" The girl started out, pulling at her hair some more. "I was with a friend and we were just kind of wandering around when we sent by this house and the back door was standing wide open. The place is abandoned except for these Rodians that hang out around the place every once in a while so we decided that we would go inside and take a look around."

"That wasn't very smart. You could have gotten yourself killed. But... what did you find in there." Marr Herrick asked, intent on keeping the conversation moving so the old woman wouldn't have another chance to bust in and take over again.

"Well, most of the house was empty but in a back room there were all of these crates. A bunch of them were open so we decided to take a look inside one." The girl said, looking down at her feet and pointedly avoiding the gaze of the imperial officer.

"Here! Here!" the old woman said, almost shouting. "This is what they found in that bastard Rodian's house!"

She held out a vial of viscous yellow liquid to the imperial officer. Who took it and held up his hand, cutting her off.

"Thank you madam" he said, a mild tone of warning in his voice which silenced her almost as effectively as a stun bolt would have.

Lieutenant Herrick pulled the stopper out of the vial and smelled the liquid inside. It was positively vile and exactly what he thought it was at first glance. His assumptions that he had made from the old woman's first insane ramblings was now confirmed, the house that the girl found this vial in was involved in the local spice trade and the chemical in the bottle was an illegal substance called Muon Gold. He suddenly had stars in his eyes, this could be the just the thing that he needed to get noticed. Just maybe a major spice bust could be the key to getting him off of this miserable planet and put his career back in the fast track again. Not that the Empire really cared that much about the spice trade on the Rim, but the events of the past few months have made them start cracking down on the more inconsequential and petty crimes.

He looked back to the girl and smiled sincerely, barely able to contain his excitement.

"Could you take me to this place?" He asked her.

She nodded mutely back to him, her fingers tangled up in her hair.

"Nevermind, I will show you where it is. You come with me and look so you can get these walking bugs off of our street!" The old woman shouted, walking off down the street in front of the lieutenant and her granddaughter. Her rant became more indecipherable as she walked on ahead.

"Is she always like this?" Marr asked the young girl quietly.

"No." She said, finally looking up at him and smiling. "She's usually worse."

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

Doctor Nichola Toora's office was on a busy street and had no small number of visitors constantly stopping by to see if she was open for business. This trend was not helped by the fact that she never kept predictable hours. If she was available, she would see patients. And if she was not, than the door would simply be locked. This constant interest in her presence was problematic at times, and was precisely the reason she had a back door and a garage for her speeder built in the back alley behind her office.

It was in the late afternoon that Nichola's speeder crept into the garage, careful not to display the fact to anyone who happened to be lurking around the front of her office. The automatic doors closed down behind the speeder almost as soon as she had passed beyond their threshold. The old woman quickly powered down the engines and climbed out of her vehicle, followed along by her very animated and excited granddaughter.

Anyone who suspected that the office was a front for another operation was, of course, correct. The full extent of that front was known to only a handful of people, even within the Suns. The old woman led the younger girl through a false back wall in a cleaning closet and down into an expansive basement that was actually a fair bit bigger than the office above.

Whereas the office and medical supplies above were second-hand and run down, much as would be expected from a doctor so uncompromising as to work on Tatooine, the equipment in the basement was new and gleaming. The state of the art facilities were truly the best that money could buy.

"Where did you learn how to do all of this?" Mica asked, still tugging at the long blond hair that was so new and different for her that she couldn't quite keep her hands off of it.

"Here and there," the old woman said, her voice suddenly younger and without the thick accent. "Most of it from places that you would be better off not to know anything about."

Nikki took a glitteringly sharp steel blade and gently passed it across the skin of her neck a few times until the polymer covering over her face split away and allowed her to grasp the end and pull half of it off. In an instant the face of the old woman was gone and Nichola was staring at Mica crossly.

"At least twice that imperial was watching you pulling at your hair like that, you need to be smarter and learn how to act when you are disguised. You could have screwed up everything just by being careless."

The girl immediately let her hair drop to her side. "I'm sorry. I haven't ever had long hair like this before, it's kind of neat. I have a hard time keeping my hands off of it."

Nichola didn't answer but instead walked over and gripped the girl's long hair with one hand and pulled on it, hard. The glue holding it in place let go with a tearing sound and a shriek of pain on the part of Mica. Nikki handed the wig to Mica with a look of disgust.

"There." She said. "Now you don't have to worry about it anymore."

Mica gave Nikki a look that reminded her of the look a kicked pet might give its owner, and she immediately regretted being so harsh. The girl gave a passable performance, but passable was all it was. She would have to learn to follow directions much more effectively if she was ever going to be any real use.

"Can you make yourself into other races?" Mica asked.

"I can make myself into anything I want to be." Nikki said simply, going back to removing her own makeup.

"I don't understand, what do you mean by that?" Mica said.

Nikki smiled almost devilishly. "What I mean is – be careful what you say in public. The stormtrooper you pass as you walk down the street. The old woman selling stuff at a fruit stand, the young girl who asks you for money as you pass by; one of them might be me. They all might be me."

"You can make yourself into a girl my age?" Mica asked, a little unsettled. "Someone who is shorter than you are?"

Nikki pointed to the two bacta tanks in the room and the array of computers between them.

"It takes a whole lot of time and preparation, but yes." She said. "The body is only flesh that houses your mind and soul. It can be altered to serve whatever purpose you want it to serve. A lot of people have a problem with that, they see what they look like as their own personal identity and don't take well to the idea that the face they see in the mirror is entirely optional."

"I wish I could learn something like this…" Mica lamented.

"This is the easy part." Nikki said. "It's easy to change your appearance. The hard part is to change how you act, to change your mannerisms to the person you are attempting to copy. That is the part that takes a lifetime of practice and commitment to perfect."  
"Is that why master Starstealer likes you so much?" Mica asked, curious.

"What do you mean?" Nikki asked the girl, furrowing her brow.

"He doesn't like almost anyone, but he likes you." She elaborated. "Is that why?"

Nikki only laughed at this. "Morden likes me because when he first recruited me to work for the Suns, I passed the test he gave me in a very unconventional way."

"How?" Mica asked.

"Morden had told me to use my talents to steal a certain sum of money, although he didn't give me any other details than that. So what I did was I studied him. I studied his mannerisms, his habits, his family, everything. And then one day I copied him and walked right into one of his factories. I made a few changes, gave a couple particularly hard working employees raises and then I walked out with about five times the value of equipment that he had asked me to steal."

Mica smiled. "So he asked you to steal, and you stole from him?"

"In a way." Nikki admitted. "I gave everything back, but what impressed me was how I did it and how I managed to convince everyone that I was him – Even his own son. He's had the utmost confidence in me ever since."

"Now sit very still for a moment." Nikki said, leaning forward and putting her hand on the back of Mica's head so she could carefully remove the programmable plastic lenses that were changing the young girl's eye color from brown to blue.

"I will teach you anything you are willing to take the time to learn." Nikki said as she worked. "But keep in mind one important fact. You can look the way you do now and convince someone that you are someone else simply by the way you act. But you can look like someone entirely different and fail to convince someone you are that person if you are unable to play the part up here."

Nikki tapped her finger to Mica's forehead for emphasis, smiling slightly.

"You understand what I'm telling you?" Nikki asked.

Mica nodded mutely.

"No you don't." Nikki said, smiling and shaking her head.


End file.
